How long do you usually drive to reach a place you want to take picture. Sometime I drive more then an hour to take few picture or just to discover the light or conditions are not nice and come back home. Or I drive many time to the same place just too know it and decide when to take a single picture...

I often drive for 5 hours to be at a particular spot for a particular time to coincide with sunrise or sunset for example. I usually do this if I have time spare and I'm going in that general direction anyway, for work for example. Mostly though I probably travel between 1/2 hour and 1 1/2 hours when at home in the Lake District as all areas are accessible to me in this time span.
If I'm going to the beach for sunset then it takes me about two minutes, too lazy to walk there!!

I plan about 3 trips a year to Scotland decicated to taking photographs and walking/running in the hills, these range from 3 days to 10 days, I'm often with my friends so we do a fair bit of walking and running and drinking and take the odd snap shot or two.

JP

I have my favourit spots just a hopscotch away so no long carrides.Everything from half an hour up til 3 hours drive,but I cover most of it within an hour. Half hour west,i have the ocean and different types of coastline. Half hour east I have the mountains..Oh yes I feel lucky :)

But hey mr. Parminter. Scotland is a country I so wanna go to, so if I get to tag along on one of your trips...? :)

I mostly walk to get my shots. I can sometimes be walking for 2-3 hours before realizing that it is time to turn around and go back home... :/

When I drive I usually go to the Swedish east coast with the archipelago for seascapes. Around one and a half hour drive. Stockholm is my favorite town for street photo and it takes 45 minutes by car to get there.

/ Jacob

Well, to take the pictures that I really care about, I have to fly to other countries, sometimes other continents... Of course, I also climb, so it's never purely photographic trips.

This is 30 seconds, I go there every day:


This is 5 minutes, I go there every couple of weeks:


This is 15 minutes, I go there every couple of weeks:


This is 35 minutes, I go there maybe once a month:


This is 2 hours, I don't go there nearly often enough, but maybe 5 or 6 times a year:


I will go to any of these places at almost any time I feel like it. Very seldom to I think about what the conditions will be like because I enjoy these places for the peace and the comfort they bring me. BUT, I always take a camera...you never know!!

You would be more than welcome John, we should organise a meeting up there one day perhaps.

JP

Good question.
I use to take shots in Tuscany that is about two and half hours form home .
I prefer to shot in fall and winter ( apart for the light conditions) because I can be back home not too late .

Probably about one and a half hours as max as a day trip just for photography alone. That gets me to the coast of East Anglia and maybe Kent. London is a hour's train ride if i wanted to do any street stuff. Otherwise 20 to 30 minutes for Cambridge, less for the local woods and fairly unexciting rural stuff.

The longest I've driven for a shot was nearly 4 hours. It wasn't the best photoshoot session and I was really disappointed.

I have driven 10 hrs with no luck.....and I have driven 15 minutes and got an awesome shot:-)

The longest distance for one day was about 4 hours....each way - so 8 hours in the car, that was hard but worth it :)


A usual big planned photo tour are 400-600 km for me

I live in Essex, UK, which (for the uninitiated) is largely flat, heavily populated along the Thames estuary and full of intensive agriculture and other industry. The industrialisation peters out as you head towards the Suffolk border but it's still not what I'd call very picturesque. It has a very bleak and cold North Sea shoreline and a few muddy inlets / rivers which are, at best, quaint - e.g. Maldon, etc,,,

Therefore, to get anywhere with anything resembling a hill (let alone a mountain) I have to drive three hours to get to Derbyshire / Peak District or 5+ hours to get to the Lake District. 2 Hours will get me to the Chiltern Hills on the Hertfordshire / Buckinghamshire borders but these are little more than bumps on the horizon. They do contain the Ashridge Estate - which is brilliant for the two week period at the end of April / beginning of May when the bluebells are out.

Generally, therefore, I do the odd drive out locally - of 1 to 2 hours - but I prefer, when I have the time and petrol money, to get as far away from south east England as possible. The north west of England and highlands of Scotland are where I feel most "at home" with or without a camera.

I live just on the last pathetic gasp bit of the chilterns, which are, as you say no more than bumps compared to the rocky stuff you get north of that diagonal that runs from the severn to the Tees estuaries. I sympathise, but I quite like shooting the landscape where urban industry gives way to open spaces. Not for it's beauty though ;-) Essex is good for skies and bleak mudflats and knackered boats decaying slowly. . .
Jon

So do I Paul, mind, I'm a born and bred Lakelander working in Scotland so have the best of both worlds fortunately at the moment.

JP

15 minutes with car, several days with my MTB. But that's history...

Jammy devil....!!

I'm Stockport born and bred but spent my formative years stomping around the High Peak and Lake District. Work took me to Newcastle for 7 years and Perth, in Scotland, for 5 years. So I do know a bit about Scotland and desperately want to get up there for at least a week this year. I've lived in north Essex for 11 years and it is such a long way from anywhere of interest to me, photographically.

I agree with Jon (JBA) about the skies and mudflats in Essex. Maldon can be quite pleasant but I grow increasingly homesick for a few sun-dappled hills, dry-stone walls and empty, craggy spaces that let your mind run free.

Yeah, but you have to go there when they aren't full of people 'getting away from it all'. The Yorkshire Dales and the Lakes are like a flippin theme park in the summer ;-) Still beautiful though. .
Jon